Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

It has been a bit of a week, one way or another, with a range of notable, though sometimes small events. It began last Sunday with us driving down to Wanganui. We got to the section just as the sun was setting which gave the timber frame a gorgeous orange colour. The work in hand was the roof formers and trusses, so scaffolding surrounded the house. This gave us a “one time only” elevated view of our home so we sized the opportunity and enjoyed walking round the temporary platform. We had an early cup of tea on Monday morning and were greeted with a crisp and clear start to what became a lovely sunny day. On walking down to the section we found Adam the Builder (Bert is actually the Project Manager) getting ready for his day and had a good chat. We drove over to the other Wanganui section where “our team” are working and had a tour of that house now that the frames are up. It is vast, more than 4 times the size of ours. We shopped on the way home for lunch. At some point in the morn

We started our week with the 13th anniversary of our arrival in New Zealand. In order to celebrate we bought some dessert wine on our way home from getting Nicky’s hearing aid fixed. When chilled it went down very well. It was announced that our Covid level would stay at 2.5 in Auckland until the 23rd, with confirmation being announced on the 21st. We had a quiet afternoon and in the evening watched the first episode of the new series of Grand Designs NZ. It was supposed to be the last episode of the previous series, but didn’t get aired. I was especially interested to see it because it was the conversion (into a New York style apartment) of the old Farmers tea room on the top floor of what is now a hotel. I had visited the old tea room a couple of years ago during the Heritage Festival, and of course Nicky had been as a child. The purchase was discussed during the visit as it is a registered heritage site. The building of the apartment was completed within the requirements of the heri

I have been quite busy with work this week, catching up on jobs that I wasn’t able to do during Covid Level 3 or while we were down in Wanganui. It has been good to earn a few dollars.  Nicky’s social and church events are still not happening so she has been at home, reading, listening to audio books, cleaning, washing windows and doing the laundry. This has been helped by some spring weather bringing some lovely sunshine, and the Barlow Recliners have had quite a bit of time out on The Rattigan, often with us in them. The clear skies have brought some chilly mornings, and there was a light frost on next doors’ roof on Tuesday. Socialising is still possible, and we were very pleased to have a visit from Ivan and Fay on Thursday while they were in Auckland, visiting from Christchurch where they now live (Nicky used to work with Fay). I also enjoyed a beer up at The Block on Friday evening, but my Deep and Meaningful meeting this week was via Zoom with being limited to groups of 10.

We woke on Monday morning in Covid Level 2.5, the significant aspect of which for us being that we could now leave Auckland. In the hope that this would be the case we had booked four nights accomodation in Wanganui. The morning was occupied with laundry, shopping and Nicky returning items to a very busy library. Discovering last week that it could take up to four weeks to get money out of Nicky’s KiwiSaver, I downloaded the application form and Nicky filled it in, but needed a JP’s signature for some of it. She went off to our local JP, but the queue was so long already she wasn’t allowed to join it, and the JP in Avondale was closed. So she came back home and we started getting ready for dinner as we had invited Stella, Steve and Ros over with not having seen them for awhile due to lockdown. This resulted in a very pleasant, though Scrabble-free, evening. Tuesday started mild and dull. We packed and headed off south, having an uneventful and straight forward journey. We knew that we